1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a management technology which combines modules to construct a computer machine in a compound computer machine in which a plurality of modules are installed in one casing.
2. Description of the Related Art
A compound computer machine constituted of a processor, a memory, an IO device, a storage device and the like is used in a WEB server, an application server, or a database server in a business system for use in a corporation. In recent years, the compound computer machine has been used which aims at saving a space of the compound computer machine or disposing, integrating, and managing servers in one place in the system. As the compound computer machine, a blade server is well known. In this blade server, components of the computer machine such as a CPU, a memory, and an HDD are installed in a thin case called a CPU module or a CPU blade, and a plurality of CPU modules are installed in a case called a chassis or an enclosure to realize a high-density compound computer machine. Therefore, more space can be saved as compared with a conventional computer machine.
Moreover, in the blade server, when a power supply or a network switch is separated from the server, and shared, a highly functional operation such as replication can be performed. However, there appears a compound computer machine in which the server is divided into a module having the processor and the memory, a storage, and I/O to reduce construction components more than in a conventional blade server, and the highly-functional operation can be performed.
As to the compound computer machine constituted of such module components, since a large number of module combinations are possible, it is possible to flexibly meet requests of a processor resource, a storage resource, and an I/O resource.
In the compound computer machine, a management module generally exists in order to manage a large number of modules. A manager of the blade server accesses this management module via means such as telnet so that it is possible to manage an ON or OFF state of a power supply of the computer machine in the blade server. Furthermore, a management software is used which operates in an external computer machine of the blade server, that is, a so-called management server in order to manage the system including an operation system, an application or the like operating in the computer machine. This management server is connected to the above-described management module via a management network such as a local area network (LAN), and can communicate with the management module to thereby manage the ON or OFF state of the power supply of the computer machine in the blade server. This management server is connected to the individual computer machines in the blade server via the management network, and manages the operation system, the application or the like operating in the computer machine. It is general to use an agent software operating in the computer machine in the communication between the management software and the computer machine.
It is to be noted that this type of blade server is described in JP-A-2002-32153.
In the above-described compound computer machine, the modules can be installed and constructed with a high degree of freedom in order to make possible the operation which flexibly meets various requests. However, when the number of the present modules increases, an operation situation becomes complicated, and a lot of labor is required for the management of the compound computer machine.
As a known example to solve such problem, there is disclosed “Multipartition Computer System” in JP-A-2002-14939. In this known example, a service processor performs the management via a communication link in a multiprocessor computer system. However, in this system of the known example, when there is a restriction on a construction of the module of the compound computer machine, a lot of labor is required for the manager to grasp a management method, and it is difficult to manage the operation of the compound computer machine automatically.